Expert calculates:

Asteroid 2024 YR4 could hit moon instead of Earth

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Viam)

At the end of last year, astronomers discovered the asteroid 2024 YR4, which could collide with the Earth in 2032 with a probability of up to 2.3 percent. Now an expert has discovered that the cosmic chunk could also hit the moon.

The asteroid 2024 VR4, which was found on 27 December last year using the ATLAS asteroid warning system in Río Hurtado (Chile), is between 40 and 100 meters in size. According to the European Space Agency ESA, it is on a collision course with Earth, where it could impact on December 22, 2032.

According to the most likely scenario, the asteroid would explode in the Earth's atmosphere, releasing eight megatons of energy in TNT equivalents. This is more than 500 times the energy of the atomic bomb that was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during the Second World War.

According to calculations, countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador would then be at risk. But Earth is not the only celestial body with which YR4 could collide in 2024. There is also a small possibility that the cosmic chunk could hit the moon.

This is the conclusion reached by David Rankin, who works for the Catalina Sky Survey project supported by the US space agency NASA, which searches for comets, potentially dangerous asteroids and near-Earth objects. He estimates the probability of YR4 colliding with the moon in 2024 at 0.3 percent.

Will make a large crater on the moon
Because the Earth's satellite has no atmosphere, the asteroid will reach its surface unhindered and leave a crater with a diameter of up to two kilometers upon impact, according to Rankin. However, by the standards of the moon, which has been subjected to countless asteroid and comet impacts over the course of its existence, this is not much.

The effects of the collision would probably be visible from Earth - although we ourselves would probably not be affected. "There is a possibility that some material could be thrown back that could hit the Earth, but I very much doubt that this is a major hazard," Rankin told New Scientist.

Astronomers will use the "James Webb" space telescope (pictured below) to take a closer look at YR4 in 2024, which is hurtling through space at around 48,000 kilometers per hour, from March to May in order to calculate its orbit more precisely and determine its size and composition.

(Bild: Northrop Grumman)

In the coming months, it will move away from Earth and will no longer be visible for the time being. The asteroid 2024 VR4 cannot be observed again until 2028 - when scientists will reassess the risk of an impact on Earth or the moon.